I met Shilpa’s friend Imran when I was living in New Delhi, working as a grant-writer for an upstart NGO called Lakshmi Satyam. We focused on connecting disenfranchised village women with international micro-lenders and funding small, rural businesses—all of which sounds pretty decent, but in reality the organization was mostly a conduit for big lending corporations that allowed American investors feel like they were making a difference while they actually made a tidy profit. Microcredit was hot in the late 90s, and Lakshmi Satyam was a cash cow for grants, which in turn made it a good way for NGO people like me and Shilpa to earn a living.
Shilpa was our village aide liaison. She’d never been out of India, but she spoke perfect English in a charmingly stuffy British accent, and she also knew five or six different north Indian dialects, which made her really useful out in the field. I was fairly certain I was falling in love with her, because I found myself keeping a running list of all the things that made her perfect, like the sharp and annunciated way she said “actually,”—ac-tually—and how she knew how to cover her head and play the modest Indian woman when we did village trips, but also because she knew how to make a good alfredo sauce and dance the tango, two things that were hard to come by in Delhi at the time.
A lot of stuff was hard to come by in Delhi then. Good tortilla chips, unspoiled
mayonnaise, and quality aged cheese were some of those things. But what was really hard about living there—what working with Shilpa kind of soothed but also weirdly aggravated for me— was how foreign I felt, basically all the time. I’d been there for two years, in the same
neighborhood, and kids still ran up to me on the street screaming “Angrez! Angrez!” which, I’d learned from Shilpa early on, is a Hindi bastardization of “English!” but has come to mean just
foreigner in general. Every day teenage guys smirked at me and swerved into my path on their scooters when I was walking home from the market. “HALLO MAN! WHICH COUNTRY?” they’d yell, not two feet from my nose, and I would want to punch them. Instead I’d force a grin and yell “HEY DUDE! SLAP ME SOME FORESKIN BRO-HAM!” or something like that, which was my little way of mocking them without them knowing for sure whether I was mocking them or not. Then I’d walk away and feel shitty for a while.
None of this happened when I traveled to villages with Shilpa. People still stared, but they’d only whisper furtively to their friends or snicker behind their hands and watch us go by. It was like her presence was magic, it validated me, which was really nice, but as soon as I’d go out alone I was back to being a casual tourist again in the eyes of the city, and I hated that feeling, because I felt like I had actually invested something in India, which should have set me apart, and I wanted it show on my face when I walked down the street.
Shilpa and I talked about this at work occasionally, and her opinion on the matter was that what I really needed was a good Indian “guy-friend” in Delhi, some native urbanite to call me yar, which meant “buddy,” drape an arm around my shoulder in public and show me the real India, the one I missed out on because I was an Angrez. She said she knew someone who would be the perfect Indian friend for me, a guy named Imran. He was playwright, she said, and a poet, and a film director. He did a little of everything, actually.
“Sounds like a real jack of all trades,” I remember saying. I was unenthusiastic. “He works in an accounting office,” she said. “Why don’t I invite him to my place on Saturday so the two of you can meet up? He’ll bring ganja. He always does.”
I wasn’t exactly thrilled about being set up on a blind date with a potential Indian “guy- friend,” but it was a chance to see Shilpa away from work, and I hadn’t smoked grass since I’d
been ripped off by a junkie in Connaught Place a few months earlier, so on Saturday afternoon I took a rickshaw across town to Shilpa’s apartment and waited for Imran to show up. He was an hour late. When he finally arrived he sat down without talking and rolled a joint. He was wearing a starched white kurta and faded blue jeans, and he was pretty good looking. I decided I didn’t like him, but at least he had grass.
Shilpa didn’t smoke, so Imran and I sat on the floor at Shilpa’s coffee table and passed the joint back and forth. Imran didn’t say very much, and Shilpa went off somewhere, and I found myself becoming more and more uncomfortable as the grass started to take effect. We were smoking the way Europeans tend to, each of us holding the joint for as long as we wanted it and then passing it on, so I remarked to Imran that in the States we did a kind of puff-puff-pass thing, like a give and take, so you were always passing the joint back and forth.
“That sounds rather tedious,” was all he said, and we sat smoking in silence until his mobile phone rang, making the sound of real chirping birds.
“That’s a pretty cool ringtone,” I said.
“It’s a new polyphonic ringtone!” said Shilpa, who had skipped into the living room at the sound. “Imran has the new Samsung 8920!”
Imran flipped his phone shut and told us that someone called I.P. was coming over. Shilpa scowled. “That bastard I.P.,” she said to Imran. “When he gets here, I want you to punch him in the chest for me.”
“I’m for peace,” said Imran. “You punch him.”
Then Imran turned to me and explained, in a kind of bored and listless way, that I.P. was their old friend who had betrayed them.
“What did?” I said.
“Being the lead singer of his stupid band,” said Shilpa. “All the girls chasing after him,” said Imran.
“What’s the name of his band?” I said.
“Men Who Pause,” said Shilpa and Imran together. “Get it?” said Shilpa. “Men-who-pause. Menopause.” “No,” I said. “I don’t get it.”
Shilpa looked at me blankly and then turned to Imran. “He doesn’t get it,” she said. “He gets it,” said Imran, and he busied himself with rolling another joint.
A few minutes later I.P. came in looking drunk and sleepy eyed. He had long black hair in a pony tail and a beard. He wanted to know if we were coming to the Canadian party with him. Shilpa walked up to I.P. with her hand extended, but when he tried to shake it she punched him hard in the chest.
“Ow!” said I.P. rubbing his chest. “That hurt! Why did you do that?” “You know why I did that,” said Shilpa.
I.P. stood by the door for the next ten minutes smiling sheepishly and rubbing his chest. He asked again if we were coming to the Canadian party but Shilpa just scoffed at him and said that nobody wanted to go to some stupid Angrezi party, and soon after he left.
We spent the next few hours smoking more joints and drinking Coke and gin, except for Shilpa who never drank and after a while fell asleep on the couch.
“Look at that,” said Imran. He got up and stood over her. “She’s just like a little man. That’s who she was in her last life, you know. A little wiry man. It’s so obvious. And we knew each other too. We were lovers.”
“You were a woman in your last life?” I said.
“No, also a man,” said Imran. He got down on his knees and peered at Shilpa’s face. “Look at those delicate jaw bones,” he said tenderly, running his finger along the lines of her face. “A perfect…little…man.” He was whispering, and with each word he moved his face closer and closer to Shilpa’s until his lips grazed her cheek and he kissed her softly.
I thought to myself that I should probably be feeling something strongly in that moment, some ping of jealousy or territorial inclination, but all I felt was a low and humming anxiety that was stuck in the lower third of my body. Imran got up and poured himself another glass of Coke and gin. I was on a floor pillow holding the remnants of a joint, and for just a moment I felt completely paralyzed. I had forgotten how to move my limbs.
Imran cleared his throat. “Shilpa has the idea that you and I are supposed to become friends,” he said, reaching for the joint, which had gone out. He toked it anyway, and then looked at it like it had insulted him.
“I know,” I said. “Shilpa gets these ideas sometimes…”
“But I think you know that’s not why I’m here tonight,” said Imran. I nodded.
“And I think I know why you’re here tonight too,” he said, grinning and glancing at Shilpa. “But tell me,” he continued, “have you ever had any visions of your past life?”
“Not really,” I said. “Well, once maybe. But I think it was just a—”
“Shilpa and I should be together,” he interrupted. “But she’s decided I’m a hopeless case. And she’s right. All my girlfriends leave me for the same reason. I can’t write unless I am drunk. I can’t act unless I am drunk. Shilpa says I am determined to kill myself.”
“It’s my life,” said Imran. “Now please, help me. I need an idea for a play and I have no idea what it should be. Tonight is the night. I have to have the idea tonight.”
“How about past lives?” I said. “How about a play about all your past lives and how you and Shilpa are meant for each other but tragically unable to make it work because of your incurable addiction to alcohol and ganja?”
“That’s it!” said Imran sarcastically. “You are one brilliant bastard.”
He went in to the kitchen and filled his glass again. When he came back he kept talking about himself and his past lives and a friend of his who was a psychic, and I tried to listen to him but I kept drifting away until he suggested we go out on the terrace and play an acting
improvisation game. I was beginning to feel kind of horrible inside my chest but I wasn’t sure if it was merely a pedestrian horror brought on by the ganja or something more serious.
Outside on the terrace it was quiet and dark. Imran was breathing deeply and pacing around the small area, huffing and swinging his arms back and forth, rotating his shoulders.
“Let’s get started,” he said. “I’ll begin and you follow my lead, ok?” “Wait a minute,” I said. “Who’s my character?”
“Just follow my lead.” Imran turned away and when he looked back his face was squinted and pained.
“What in the hell do you think you are doing?” he said in a high, nagging feminine voice. He looked me up and down and sneered as if I repulsed him.
“Huh?” I said.
Imran scoffed. “I said, what the fuck do you think you are doing back here after what you
“Oh,” I said. “I mean . . . who are you to ask me that…man?” I tried to make my voice strong and angry like Imran’s.
“You think you can just walk right in here as if nothing has happened and expect me to behave accordingly?” Imran’s falsetto echoed out into the empty street. A dog barked. Then another.
“How do you expect me to behave?” I said, trying to add some anger in there. Be angry, I was thinking. Be angry at Imran.
“You are just too much,” said Imran. “This is unbelievable. You are such a bastard. I have been waiting for you to call me all day long and apologize for last night. But did you call? Did you even bother to fucking call?”
“Did you even bother to call me?” I said. “Why do I always have to be the one to call?” “You’re a sick bastard, you know that?” said Imran. He stuck his finger in my face. “A
sick fucking bastard.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“You’re right,” I said. “I am a sick bastard. You’re completely right and I’m fucking sorry.”
I bent my head as if to cry, which I was relatively sure I wouldn’t actually do, but Imran was a pretty good actor.
“Stop,” said Imran in his normal voice. “Wait a minute. Cut, cut. Why did you do that?” “Do what?” I said.
“Why did you just give up like that? I really felt like we had something there until you gave up. Let’s try again. I want you to fight with me, ok? Fight!”
“You’re a sick fucking bastard, you know that?”
“Actually,” I said, “I think I have to go to home now. I have a really awful headache.” “Oh,” said Imran. He turned away and stared out at the empty night.
Back inside the apartment the lights were bright and oppressive so I switched them off. I could see Shilpa’s dark form curled up on the couch, and I could hear the sound of her breathing. I walked over to her and squinted to make out the features of her face in the darkness, and at first I thought maybe she had woken up, so I leaned in closer to see if her eyes were open. Her
features kind of coalesced and I saw that her eyes were closed, but she was grinning this hideous clown’s grin, and I was suddenly terrified of her and the darkness of her apartment. It was very late and all of Delhi was utterly dark and menacing and I wanted nothing to do with any of it.
I went back out on the terrace. Imran was standing in the corner, leaning over the railing and looking down at the street three stories below. He was weeping softly.
“Hey,” I said, but he didn’t reply.
“Hey. Dude.” I said softly. “It’s gonna be ok.” Imran whispered something I couldn’t quite hear. “What?” I said.
“Go. Fuck. Yourself.” He said. “Fucking stoned Angrezi bastard.”
I stood there stunned for a second trying to think of something to say, but nothing came to me. So I went back inside and made my way to the bathroom, where I stood over the latrine and tried to piss. My body was clenched so tight that only a trickle came out. I opened the bathroom door, letting the fluorescent light cut an oblong rectangle across the room, and I followed it to the front door. When I made it to the street I looked up at the terrace, thinking I might flip Imran off, but he wasn’t there anymore.
A couple months later Shilpa took a higher paid position at a rival microcredit NGO a few hours north in Chandigarh, and moved there permanently. Occasionally I’d hear bits of news or gossip about her from another NGO person, but after the night with Imran my attractions to her had cooled, and once she was gone I thought about her less and less. When she did come to mind, I found myself making inverted versions of my original running list—how fake and snooty her British accent had sounded, how embarrassingly giddy she always got about new cell phone models and smart little compact cars, and how she never did her trip reports on time.
But while Shilpa gradually drifted from my mind, I thought about Imran a lot, in particular those moments on the terrace and how completely stunned and shitty and useless he had made me feel, and how he’d basically slapped me in the face when I tried to comfort him. I wanted to see him again, if only to show him that I didn’t care what he thought of me. I found myself looking out for him at the government-sponsored cultural events I attended regularly for work, but evidently Imran didn’t run in those circles. Once I even called Shilpa for his number, using ganja as my excuse, but when I called I got a woman who didn’t speak any English, and she hung up on me after a minute or two of incomprehensible exchange.
It wasn’t until about a year later that I saw him one night sitting alone at the bar in a cheesy Tex-Mex restaurant that catered mostly to tourists. It was the only place in town where you could get tacos. His hair was neatly trimmed and he was wearing a smart black suit. He was holding his cell phone in one hand and a whiskey and Coke in the other, and when I sat down beside him he looked at me for a moment, as if trying to dig the memory of my face out from